for Covent Garden Theatre, then under Mr. Macready's
management.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Charles Dickens.]

GRETA BRIDGE, _Thursday, Feb. 1st, 1838._

MY DEAREST KATE,

I am afraid you will receive this later than I could wish, as the mail
does not come through this place until two o'clock to-morrow morning.
However, I have availed myself of the very first opportunity of writing,
so the fault is that mail's, and not this.

We reached Grantham between nine and ten on Thursday night, and found
everything prepared for our reception in the very best inn I have ever
put up at. It is odd enough that an old lady, who had been outside all
day and came in towards dinner time, turned out to be the mistress of a
Yorkshire school returning from the holiday stay in London. She was a
very queer old lady, and showed us a long letter she was carrying to one
of the boys from his father, containing a severe lecture (enforced and
aided by many texts of Scripture) on his refusing to eat boiled meat.
She was very communicative, drank a great deal of brandy and water, and
towards evening became insensible, in which state we left her.

Yesterday we were up again shortly after seven A.M., came on upon our
journey by the Glasgow mail, which charged us the remarkably low sum of
six pounds fare for two places inside. We had a very droll male
companion until seven o'clock in the evening, and a most delicious
lady's-maid for twenty miles, who implored us to keep a sharp look-out
at the coach-windows, as she expected the carriage was coming to meet
her and she was afraid of missing it. We had many delightful vauntings
of the same kind; but in the end it is scarcely necessary to say that
the coach did not come, but a very dirty girl did.

As we came further north the mire grew deeper. About eight o'clock it
began to fall heavily, and, as we crossed the wild heaths hereabout,
there was no vestige of a track. The mail kept on well, however, and at
eleven we reached a bare place with a house standing alone in the midst
of a dreary moor, which the guard informed us was Greta Bridge. I was in
a perfect agony of apprehension, for it was fearfully cold, and there
were no outward signs of anybody being up in the house. But to our great
joy we discovered a comfortable room, with drawn curtains and a most
blazing fire. In half an hour they gave us a smoking supper and a bottle
of mulled port (in which we drank your health), and t